


we're screwed up without a cause (i love you with your flaws)

by cemeteryblooms



Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Angst, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending?, How Do I Tag, Hurt/Comfort, Letters, M/M, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Please Don't Kill Me, Sad Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Sad ending?, Strangers to Lovers, Third Wheel Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), but make it: sad, just read and suffer ig, like sapnap's in hs and karl's in college, pls stop making him third wheel tho i beg, who knows hahaha
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-13
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-17 23:13:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28733274
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cemeteryblooms/pseuds/cemeteryblooms
Summary: "i know i'm already losing my mind, but i feel like i lose it even more when you aren't here."in which karl falls in love with his pen pal whose address he found written in the drawer of a thrifted desk.
Relationships: Alexis | Quackity & Karl Jacobs, Clay | Dream & GeorgeNotFound & Sapnap (Video Blogging RPF), Clay | Dream/GeorgeNotFound (Video Blogging RPF), Karl Jacobs/Sapnap, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 77





	1. one.

_four months before._

karl jacobs was in a thrift store thirty minutes from his parents’ house on a wednesday night.

there was no possible way of explaining the situation without it sounding completely bizarre, but he had been working on some questions assigned in one of his classes when his desk had splintered apart beneath him. as a result of his absolute refusal to do his homework on his bed, he had dragged himself to the closest thrift store to buy a new desk for (hopefully) around thirty dollars, putting more of his minimum wage-based allowance towards repairing the two of his now cracked computer monitors. how the impact of the desk splintering and collapsing atop of the tower he stored beneath his desk didn’t break anything of much dearer costs was simultaneously a blessing and a mystery, a mystery karl wasn’t willing to mull over and solve.

thrift stores out in texas on the outskirts of town were an odd image in themselves, from the desolate carpark shrouded in darkness, save for the two lone streetlights the entire spans relied on for light, to the pure white bricks that mimicked the rare snowfall that appeared every few years in the belly of winter. there had actually been one that year, at the end of January. it was only for a couple of hours, probably five at most, but the chilling temperature still clung to the suburbs nearly two months after, now in the middle of march. it explained why karl was bundled in both a purple hoodie underneath a thick puffer jacket, his breath coming out in swirls of condensation in the store regardless of their low but still prominent heating system.

the late-night crowds that mulled around the store almost held a deeper sense of ominousness than the shop itself did. karl looked over at the clock that hung above the register. the time read twenty-five to ten, hinting at the shop’s closing time inching closer. it aided as a reasoning behind the characters he could make out in his sightline; two girls with brightly dyed hair wandering aimlessly between the clothes racks, a man shrouded amongst the furniture around forty paces from karl who sat curled in an oversized antique armchair, the group of males in their late twenties milling in and out between their cars and the shop, their movements vocalised by loud chatter and the booming of their car radios outside, and the lady milling the till whose head rested against her crossed arms and her eyes slipped shut. the overhead radio station had been changed to one that played rock classics, elvis presley’s voice mulling around softly.

karl looked back at the desks, rubbing his eyes in disgruntlement. his options were quite limited, there were only two to pick from. one was a smaller, thinner unit, made of black plastic with short metal legs and a glass tabletop. there were a few issues with it that karl could determine from just looking at it; it was too short in its stance, making it a hassle to try and sit comfortably at, and he was weary of its build of simply glass and plastic. karl was naturally clumsy, so he knew having something that was built so fragile and brittle would be irresponsible and idiotic on his part, so that desk was overruled.

the only other option, however, was an ornate hardwood desk. it was solid and roomy, leaving plenty of room for his computer setup and a spot to work on his various pieces of classwork, with an array of drawers down the side of it. the original shade created by the desk’s wood had been painted over in a quite poor paint job, the shade was a murky turquoise and had chipped around the corners, with various other scuffs that could easily be linked to the wear and tear from the previous owner. though karl would just settle with it, buy it and move on with his life (though he would probably try and repaint it a better colour than whatever the off-shade he was looking at was), he was concerned about whether he could safely get it home. half an hour was an unnecessarily long time to drive to get out to this shop to begin with, and there was no way it would fit inside his car so he would have to attach it with bungee cables to the top of his car like the overused cartoons of the classic American family moving houses in the nineties. sure, karl’s car was shitty and breaking down and in desperate need of replacement, but he didn’t want to inevitably kill it with a slow and painful death from being crushed by the sheer mass of this desk attached to his roof.

luckily, the woman who had since woken back up from her short nap at the register, looked over at karl standing still and staring at the piece of furniture and calling out to him, “you need to get us to deliver that for you, sweetheart?”

so yes, karl managed to get back home with a weird desk he couldn’t tear his eyes from no matter how hard he tried, didn’t destroy his car from having to carry it himself, finished the remains of his coursework that had been interrupted around an hour prior, and only spent forty dollars. it was a successful evening in his eyes.

….____....

the desk was delivered the next day, carried into karl’s room by the two delivery men and arranged in the void space that the previous desk had resided, awkwardly directed by karl with a lack of verbal communication and mindless arm flailing. they left briskly after that, and karl allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief as his posture crumpled down, the mere act of simply directing delivery men putting him on an uncomfortable edge.

it looked as identical as it did the evening before in the store, only missing the slightly sheen layer of dust that had hugged the tabletop of it the night prior. they must’ve dusted it. amongst his room, the desk’s colour clashed awfully with the beige colour of karl’s walls, and he crinkled his nose at that, making a mental note to either try and chip off all of the paint or repaint it a different colour. he was thinking either a toffee brown to match the walls, or a maroon or purple to coincide with the colours of his furniture and other interior decorations.

karl got through rearranging the items on his desk quite quickly, reconnecting the wires of his computer together as he hummed some obscure tune alex had played him briefly on their last discord call two nights ago. karl had no clue who the song was by or what it was even called, but he remembered the melody of it, and he was pretty certain that the lyrics talked about a girl named caroline, or something along those lines.

once everything on top of the desk was finished, he moved to start putting things away in those drawers. the concept of the desk containing storage was thrilling to karl. he assumed it was a less common thing to see nowadays, considering his old desk setup that he had ordered from ikea didn’t and the appearance of the desk had to be dated from the nineties, possibly the eighties. the top drawers were easy, he put his headphones in the top, smallest one, and then put a small stack of containers containing various pens and pencils, packed completely to the brim and struggling to maintain the clasps on the edges that held the lid and container together. he had planned that the final two would contain his spare notebooks and his rattan basket filled with various cassettes that he had gotten from a garage sale as a young child that he had gotten far too emotionally attached to over time. it was brilliant!

he stopped in his tracks when he opened the third drawer. karl just froze in his tracks as he mulled over what was inside, sitting back onto his bedroom floor.

there was an address written on the bottom of it.

that wasn’t a rare occurrence, right? it was common for furniture to have an address on it, such as the address of a manufacturer or a shipping company. however, those addresses were usually stamped on in black ink, or printed on a sticker and then put on the item, and they were usually beneath the tabletop of the desk as well. furniture companies didn’t handwrite addresses in the third drawer on the side of a desk in a green sharpie.

_ sapnap.  
148 leatherwood street  
kingsville, tx  
78363 _

karl felt as if he had just been transported into some sort of pre-teen mystery story, where a mysterious almost falls into the hands of the protagonist all from the aid of simple writing and they proceed to go on a wild adventure in a fantasy realm, befriend mythical creatures, learn important life lessons, and then still make it back home for dinnertime. he ran his fingers through his light brown hair as he tried to figure out why there would be an address written inside the desk drawer. he recognised the town as well, kingsville was a few suburbs over, small and quant. he used to go down there to spend Christmas with his extended family, sleeping over at his grandmother’s house. the street was familiar as well, it was a cul-de-sac a block away from where his grandma lived, that particular street being littered with oversized stark white houses with well-kept front gardens, with the entirety of the street concealed behind security gates.

he had to tell alex about this.

karl rolled over slightly to grab his phone in the tips of fingers from atop his bedspread, opening the discord app and typing a message to his closest confidant as quickly as he possibly could.

_ karlojacobs: quackity get on vc right now i’m losing my mind _

_ quackity: hang on give me a second i’m on call with schlatt and wilbur _

it wasn’t long before the ping sounded that alex had joined the private voice chat that was formed for himself and karl. “karlos, why have I been summoned?” alex’s voice crackled through the phone speaker.

karl raised an eyebrow at the sound of alex’s voice, it sounded slightly scratchy and hoarse. “what’s wrong with your voice man, are you alright? it sounds like you’re coming down with something.”

“yeah, fucking flu,” alex explained, sniffling slightly as added emphasis on his reasoning. “so, what’s going on that required you to call me?”

“right, okay,” karl began to launch into his explanation, pacing his room with his phone in hand and gesturing over at the desk in question out of instinct, regardless of the fact that he was well aware that his friend couldn’t see his movements. “so that desk i got from the thrift shop got delivered today, and i was putting some stuff away into the drawers and there’s an address at the bottom of one of the fucking drawers completely randomly.”

there was silence on alex’s end as he mulled it over, though karl knew he hadn’t left his computer since he could hear the other man’s desk chair creak as he readjusted his position. “i don’t get it, what’s the importance of that? isn’t that, like, a run of the mill procedure? to write down a manufacturing address?”

“it would if it was actually an address for some sort of factory,” karl shook his head. “i know the place, it’s a rich little cul-de-sac in kingsville. and it’s written in coloured sharpie, those kinds of things are normally, like, printed on.”

alex whistled lowly. “weird shit man. what are you going to do?”

karl laughed slightly. “i don’t really think this is a situation where i can do anything. it’s just some weird address written at the bottom of a desk drawer that turned up in a thrift store two hours away from the town actually listed in the address. then again, no one would just write some random address at the bottom of their drawer unless they intended someone to find it. that isn’t normal.”

“yeah i get you. do you want to join the call with schlatt, wilbur and i? we’re just playing jackbox, it can help calm you down a bit, shake it off if you’re getting weird vibes from it?” alex questioned. bless his heart, karl thought, marvelling at how quickly alex could switch between a more joking and light-hearted approach to situations to a more serious and comforting front.

“maybe later, i have a paper to work on that’s due next week,” karl politely. “thanks for asking though, i really appreciate it.”

“no worries! i better get back to them, who knows what weird shit i’m going to walk back into,” alex giggled at his own joke. “if we don’t play tonight, i’ll call you again tomorrow, okay?”

“yeah sure. i’ll see you then, dude.”

after the tone sounded signalling that alex had left the call, karl opened google and typed the address into the search bar. the street view that came up in the results showed a large house furiously painted white, karl swore he could almost make out the harsh and violent brush strokes from the slightly pixelated image of the front doorstep that he was looking at. the front steps were marble, with matching pillars on the corners that connected a balcony and the steps together. the pathway approaching them was a classic cobblestone with bushes with pink roses blooming on them lining it, giving the front garden a similar feel to a botanical garden with the simple walkway and furniture colourings in contrast to the vibrant flowers. karl knew the front garden of his family’s home was significantly feebler in comparison, with the cracked and worn concrete driveway, its potholes representing the lengths of wear and tear, and the knee-high blades of grass below the windows.

karl looked back over at the address again, chewing his lip, his belongings still sitting on the floor and anticipating being put away. he focused on the handwriting; the lettering was elongated and closely packed together, as if the writer had attempted to make them as small as possible. the ink had bled unevenly across the writing, the bottom left hand corner had bled so intensely that the letters had nearly smeared together, making the town name almost incomprehensible. karl could imagine tears running down the face of whoever had written that down, the writer attempting to furiously scrub them away but letting one escape through the gaps between his fingers, landing on the writing and a blooming annoyance fluttering in the writer’s chest for letting their emotion cloud their work. the rest of the writing had barely bled into the wood, karl couldn’t make out any other instances where the ink had bled into the grains of the wood, so he was certain that the address had been written in recently, probably just before the desk had been abandoned at the thrift store.

a newfound determination flooded karl’s head, and he pulled the drawer out of the frame it sat in, turning it over in his hands to see if the same writer with the green marker had scrawled anything else on the sides of the drawer. unfortunately, his search was fruitless, there was no other messages in the drawer. however, as karl flipped it over, there was a single line written on the bottom of the drawer, the handwriting this time much more jagged and harsh. it was all in capitals, the letters slightly overlapping in an attempt to fit the entire phrase into a single line, and it seemed to hold a much darker tone and a deeper feeling of anger than the opposite side. while the tear-stained address carried a feeling of numbness and hurt, this side seemed to be a scream into a silent void, however the scream still being silent regardless of how hard the individual attempted to scream and alert someone that they were there, since there was no one nearby, is any sound truly a sound with no one to hear it?

_HEAVY IS THE HEAD THAT FALLS WITH THE WEIGHT OF A THOUSAND THOUGHTS._

that line seemed to grip karl’s wrist and guide him encouragingly over to his notebook that he proceeded to tear a page out of. he was going to write this sapnap person a letter, and just hope for the best and see what happens.

_dear sapnap,_

__

_i’m not sure if this going to make any sense, but i will try my best to explain who I am and what this is. i bought a blue wooden desk from a thrift store just south of Floresville, and when it was delivered, i found your address written at the bottom of the drawer. i figured it would be interesting to try and contact you since i thought it was pretty weird._

__

__

_i can tell you a bit about myself if that might comfort you about me not doing this to be creepy! my name is karl, i’m twenty (i turn twenty-one in July) and i study media communications at college. i live with my parents and our dog, his name is rosco, but we call him rock because he can be as dumb as one sometimes. he’s really cute, he’s a jack Russell and he always gets really excited to meet new people! my favourite colours are purple and blue, i play minecraft with a bunch of friends i’ve made online, and i really like springtime. it gives the flowers a chance to bloom, and flowers are really neat in all honesty. if you get this, you should tell me some facts about yourself so we can get to know each other._

__

__

_i could’ve just left that address at the bottom of the drawer. i could’ve just shrugged my shoulders at it and moved on with my life, but i can’t just shake it off. something about it reads as the calls of someone running from themselves, just wishing to find a safe outlet to release a downpour of furious emotions. perhaps it was hidden in your handwriting, the way each letter sat snugly together in hopes to convey security and warmth between themselves. or maybe instead it was the way the ink had unevenly bled into the grains of wood, some tracks longer than others as encouraged by the droplets of tears that had mistakenly escaped a strong-willed façade. there was a cry of reason in why you wrote the address in there for someone to find sapnap. appearances can fluctuate and decay over time, just like how metal wears down and porcelain eventually cracks._

__

__

_i understand that this entire thing is insanely weird, and if you want, i can leave you alone, but I do hope to hear from you. regardless of exactly why i found your address in the method i did, i still want to hear the entire story that encouraged your actions. maybe we could become friends, who knows. i look forward to hearing from you!_

__

__

_well wishes  
karl jacobs_

karl dropped his pen once it was finished, a blue gel pen he had had since seventh grade, and skimmed through the piece quickly to ensure it was moderately coherent. satisfied for the most part with his effort, he paced over to his father’s office, grabbing an envelope and a stamp. he messily scrawled the address from the bottom of the drawer down on the front, rereading it three times to be completely certain he hadn’t misspelt the street, before sealing the letter inside and adding the stamp. he quickly wrote out his own address on the back, in hopes that this sapnap character he had spent the past twenty minutes overanalysing from two sentences written on a drawer from an almost-ancient wooden desk would grace him with some form of a response.

karl’s handwriting was a lot more different than sapnap’s, karl’s leant more towards some obscure, slightly demented form of cursive, hinting at subconscious desire to be seen as formal and well-put together, however lacked the delicacy that typical cursive had and appeared as if he was losing an internal battle with the pessimists in his head armed with stopwatches and disapproval who wanted every little thing to have been completed the day before. his own handwriting even proved to those around him that karl just wanted people to like him.

he grabbed his phone and headed over to the front door, slipping on a pair of plain black shoes that had sat at the ready by the door and shouting to his mother in the lounge that he would be back in five minutes for he was just taking a walk to the post box. karl slipped out the front door, letting it click shut behind him and not feeling too fussed as to lock it since his mother was in the room right by it. he slipped his hands into his pockets, clutching the envelope between them in a tight pinch. just like the night previous, winter was still attempting to throw some final punches on the temperature before succumbing to defeat, characterised by the icy wind that tossed karl’s messy brown locks around and ghosted through his oversized sweater and jeans to cling to his bones, making him instinctively shiver.

his footsteps moved in time with the chattering of his teeth, as karl’s vision chased the sun. it was only two in the afternoon, but the sun was already preparing to return to its rest, with its feeling of exhaustion seeming to rub off on karl as he rubbed his eyes. luckily, the walk to the post box was short as it was situated right on the corner of the street karl lived on to the main road. the box was bright yellow with ‘post’ printed across the back of it in capitalised black letters, decorated with a thin layer of dew. karl took the letter out of his pocket, turning it over in his hands and checking over the information on final time. doubt begun to creep into his mind at this, he knew this was most likely a very, very, stupid idea. there was a chance that sapnap no longer lived there, or perhaps sapnap had never even lived there to begin with. sapnap might not have even been real, he had no clue. he didn’t know how many times he could reiterate the fact to his conscious; it was a fucking address written in the drawer of a desk; he couldn’t take any of it as gospel truth.

regardless, he dropped it into the box, letting out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding as he heard it flutter down to land atop a pile of other envelopes. the deed was done, there was no reason to continue dwelling on it. with that, karl began the walk back to his house, his pace brisk as he desperately blew air into his hands in hopes the action would bring some warmth back to them. once he was sure he could move them well enough, he grabbed his phone back out and opened up discord again, noticing that alex’s profile still indicated that he was online and probably talking to schlatt and wilbur as they played jackbox. karl typed alex a message as quickly as his nimble fingers could let him, the biting cold against his joints making them struggle to operate.

_ karlojacobs: you guys still playing jackbox?? _

_ _

_ _

_ quackity: yeahhh we’re gonna play for a little bit longer since wilbur’s going to bed soon and after schlatt and i think we’re gonna play mario kart. you want in?? _

_ _

_ _

_ karlojacobs: i’m not at home rn but send me the jackbox code and i will be on in ten minutes _

_ _

_ _

karl didn’t dwell on the letter or the desk or sapnap for any longer after that, falling back into his typical day-to-day routine once he returned home. he played some games with his friends for a few hours (grateful that his monitors still functioned at mint condition and hadn’t suffered too dearly from the fall), had dinner his mother had cooked, did some homework and went to bed early. he didn’t even finish packing up the rest of his desk, leaving the items that were supposed to be rehomed to the drawers lay on his bedroom floor.

he didn’t think he would hear anything back.


	2. two.

_four months before_

“nick, would you make yourself useful and go and check the mail?”

sapnap sighed, shifting beneath his grey blanket that he had cocooned himself in, dragging his eyelids open with all the energy he could muster to look over at the doorway of his room. from between the outgrown locks of brown hair that hung over his eyes, he could make out his mother standing there, leaning against the frame with her arms crossed and a disgruntled look on her face.

“aren’t i making a good use of my time by laying underneath here?” he muttered back, which descended into a groan as his mother marched over and ripped the blankets off from over his body.

“you aren’t training for football, nor are you studying, so no, the way you are choosing to use your time is ridiculous,” she shook her head. “colleges don’t like idle people nick. it’s nearly five on a saturday, get up.” her tone got harsher as she talked, making sure sapnap was well-aware of her words before leaving the room again, probably to help one of his sisters.

sapnap knew he wasn’t sick, his stomach didn’t hurt and neither did his head, but he just felt so sluggish and tired. it had been getting worse and worse lately, and the week of school he had just sat through felt like the nail in the coffin. he had had a trigonometry test and a history paper due that his completion of felt entirely mediocre, finding it difficult to hone his concentration on the work in front of him and put all the energy he could muster into it, and was bracing himself for the impact of his parents becoming aware of his grades slipping. then there was football practise, that had descended from one of his favourite things in the world to a complete chore in a few short years, eating up at all his possible spare time in the mornings and evenings of the weekdays. then there was coming home to being trampled and overshadowed in the hefty lights of glory that his sisters bought to the table, his parents drawing their attention to the gentle glowing beacons their daughters seemed to grace the world with while sapnap lethargically dragged himself to bed and called it a night by seven in the evening.

he had fallen asleep early the previous night, pretty much as soon as he had gotten home from practise, without changing out of his sweat-stained shirt and gym shorts and ignoring dinner. the next thing sapnap remembered was waking up that day at three pm and laying still in his bed and staring at his bedroom wall, following every swaying line in the wall as time seemed to collapse around him. he still felt exhausted and as if he hadn’t been well-rested, regardless of the fact that he had just slept for nearly a full day from how mentally drained the school week seemed to leave him. his bones felt like they had been constricted by tight ropes, winding round and round each bone and knotting together in an indistinguishable mess against the centre of his chest, while an ear-splitting pain seemed to ring around his head without a possible source of it.

sapnap dragged himself out of bed, running his fingers through his hair in a meek attempt to push it into any sort of considerable style that didn’t allude to his time spent (or time wasted) watching the minutes pass from the sanctuary of his bed. there were plates stacked on the side of his desk, how long had they been sitting there? they looked like they had been there a while, the blue spots of mould beginning to appear slightly speckled. sapnap frowned, that couldn’t have been right. he had taken all the dishes he had down to the kitchen on thursday, he was almost certain of it. did he miss these ones? he couldn’t have, it was a stack of eight plates, there was no describable way he could’ve missed those, they sat in a stark contrast with their white and blue diamond patterns that ran all over them.

he could figure that out later.

there was also a pile of laundry on his floor, but he had done those on monday, he had literally put the sandy beige hoodie that was right at the top of the pile in the dryer with his own hands, how did it get back here so quickly? his school bag had fallen over in the night too, his notebooks spilling out across the carpeted floors as if to remind him that he had homework to do for chemistry to make sure he didn’t fall behind, and he still needed to wash his football gear.

mental checklist: check the mail, load the dishwasher, put on a load of washing that had to contain his football gear (that was a must), finish the chemistry homework.

sapnap took a breath, reciting the list to himself over and over again as he pushed his bedroom door open. easy, he could finish all of that. if he focused every single possible joule of energy his body could muster up and produce, he could knock that all out in the remaining hours of daylight.

walking down the stairs, sapnap looked over the dining room and the kitchen. it was a good reminder of everything he had, a way to cut through those overwhelming feelings of inadequacy. he had a good family, he had many talents and personal hobbies, he lived in a large home in a safe neighbourhood, he was able to eat warm food whenever he wanted, he had clean clothes on his back, he went to a good school and his family had the finances to send him to a highly-acclaimed college to further his education. he had no reason to feel those taunting, selfish thoughts of gloom and disdain with his life, the one he had been given was good, in fact, it was better than what some others had, and he had to be grateful for that. not just grateful, he had to be happy with that, in every sense of the word.

his dad was walking back over to the lounge room from the kitchen as sapnap made it off the stairs, their paths intersecting slightly. sapnap’s relationship with his father was odd, their conversations went from understanding and care to disappointment and strain constantly over several minutes, as if they were waves lapping at a tide. his father carried a glass of water with a slice of lemon perched on the end, he wore a branded (though hideous) striped polo with navy blue and a mustard yellow along with a watch of pure gold. he was a visual representation of all sapnap had, a centrepiece of all that he had to be happy with.

that particular moment, his father was riding a more ‘understanding’ wave. “you had a long sleep last night. are you feeling alright? are you coming down with something?” the older man asked gently, bringing his empty hand up to cusp sapnap’s forehead, feeling for a possible temperature to explain his lethargic state.

sapnap shrugged him off, shaking his head. “no i’m okay. my head hurts a little bit, but i had a big week this week. it’s whatever, it’ll pass.”

his father nodded and dropped his hand, and a small part of sapnap whined at the loss of contact, wishing for the hand to gently return and give him some ease, and make him feel as if someone actually cared about him and wanted him around. “understandable. before i lose you, your mum wanted me to remind you as well to not forget that tonight is anastasia’s recital, and she wants you showered and ready by seven.”

right, how could he have forgotten about that? it felt like his mother hadn’t shut up about her little prodigy violinist’s recital for months on end.

add that to the mental checklist: check the mail, load the dishwasher, put on a load of washing that had to contain his football gear, finish the chemistry homework, have a quick shower, and get into formal attire for anastasia’s recital.

“you aren’t losing me dad.” sapnap shook his head, continuing onto the front door as his dad turned to head off to the lounge room to watch golf reruns and remember his glory days.

he pushed open the front door and ventured off to the mailbox, unbothered by the coldness and slight dampness from previously melted snow along the cobblestone path to quickly slip on a pair of shoes. looking over the area he lived, sapnap took another mental note of something to be happy with. he lived in what had been considered one of the safest streets in kingsville, which was actually a rounded cul-de-sac that was gated off and isolated from the rest of the town. whilst the street itself was round, the house sapnap’s family lived in sat right in the centre, giving it a feeling of superiority over the other properties. many of the other neighbours envied the family that lived there, trying their absolute hardest to becoming as close and as friendly with the family through baked goods, gifts, and talks over their spiked iron fence that lined the property. sapnap knew it was all bullshit, and that every single one of them simply plotted for the day they moved out so they could sink their teeth into purchasing the house for themselves like a rabid raccoon gnawing on a piece of steak. he returned a wave to a pair of middle-aged women dressed in jumpsuits and visors powerwalking on the opposite side of the road before rolling his eyes, how pathetic.

sapnap grabbed the letters out of the mailbox and briskly returned back to the house in an attempt to ease the pounding in his chest that had slowly risen up to his head and was beginning to rush to his ears. as he began pushing the front door shut, the wood slipping out of his fingertips to shut again, he sifted through the letters to see who each one was addressed to. there was a letter for his mother, a bill for his father, a letter from the music school anastasia attended, and two letters for kristy, one that had been stamped with the logo of a university in england and the other referencing some sort of national gymnastics competition.

the last one, was addressed to him.

sapnap’s eyes furrowed in confusion, he never got mail. sure, he got those occasional letters from his school asking if his enrolment information was up to date, but those were always typed out and his address was emblazoned across a sticker on the front. instead, it was written on, in a purple gel pen and addressing him as sapnap, a nickname he had created for himself when he was thirteen that he eventually used as an internet alias on his discord and when he was wandering through forums discussing possible ways he could take his own life without putting himself in any sort of intense and severe pain.

the person’s handwriting was nice, it had this delicacy to it from most of its core structure deriving from cursive lettering, however, the speed at which it had been written caused it to look slightly edgier and grittier. it was, interesting, unique if you will. sapnap had no clue who on earth would send him a letter though, clay and george would just text him due to its convenience, and even if it was them, they would just address it with his name, not sapnap. he didn’t know anyone else besides that.

he left the rest of the mail on the console table by the door, tearing open the envelope with his thumb as he made his way upstairs. once he had gotten the letter out, he held it beneath the letter as he read through it, making sure the side that was addressed to him was concealed beneath the paper and anyone he passed by as he returned to his room wouldn’t notice it. he walked past kristy’s room, ignoring the boisterous and excited chatter of his two sisters as he went to his room and shut the door behind him.

the letter was from a karl, a karl who was two years older than he was, a karl that lived two hours away. as soon as karl had mentioned an oak wooden desk painted an atrocious shade of a cyan-like blue, sapnap felt all the organs in his abdomen just collapse and tumble down further into his body. he remembered the desk, that was his desk. his childhood desk, the one his father had spent days helping him paint, the one he would sit at every day and look over his backyard. he remembered the night he had written his address in there too; he was only twelve. there were hot tears running down his face uncontrollably whilst he scrubbed his face red and raw with his sleeve hoodie in hopes to pick up every single one that threatened to fall. he sat under his desk, his chin resting on his knees while he blared music off of his computer to dwell the volume of his sobbing. he didn’t even remember why he was crying to begin with, he had just been reading some odd article about how people who couldn’t feel a sense of happiness and pride in what they had didn’t deserve to be alive with what they had, and that acting as a daunting suggestion that maybe he shouldn’t live. he didn’t remember why he wrote his address on his desk drawer either, the drive to do the action solely relying on impulse. maybe it was a way for him to etch his name into the earth at that age, and act as a reminder that he had existed for a period of time if he did go through with those constant thoughts.

speaking of that night, sapnap pulled back his desk chair and sat himself down beneath his desk. of course, it wasn’t entirely the same experience, obviously, he had gotten rid of that blue desk a few months ago and had upgraded to a fancy desk with a glass tabletop, but that sensation of solid walls encasing him was a good enough reminder of that night. he looked over at his notebook and his pencil case on the floor, dropping his knees slightly to lean forward just enough to slide the two items over to himself. he tore an empty page out of his notebook and grabbed the first blue pen that worked from his pencil case, he decided that he wanted to give karl an answer.

this was someone who genuinely seemed interested in him and wanted to talk to him. sure, neither of them had no clue who the other was, the main instance tying them together being owning the exact same desk, but sapnap knew he had to take what he could get. he also simultaneously knew that karl could’ve just not said anything, he probably wouldn’t have if he was in the boy’s place, but just that small gesture made these gentle feelings of appreciation and care swirl in the deepest pit of his stomach.

it took him some time, huffily scribbling out any errors or any passages that didn’t feel as well-worded as they could’ve been, but eventually grinned triumphantly at the final result. he slipped out from beneath his desk and left the paper on his desk, reminding himself that he would need to get an envelope for it and post it out tomorrow to avoid keeping karl waiting on edge and anticipating.

sapnap caught a glimpse at the time and cursed, realising that his immersion into writing his response to karl had taken up any ounce of spare time he had and left him with only around thirty-five minutes to shower and get dressed for anastasia’s recital. he quickly sifted through the clothes in his wardrobe for some sort of nice button-up and possibly more formal pants before dashing to the bathroom.

he mentally cursed himself for not doing a single thing he had outlined for himself to do on his mental checklist. oh well, it was only a saturday, he always had tomorrow.

….____....

it had been just over a week since karl had sent the letter, and he was on a call with alex, arranging their meet-up over the summer and investigating whether june or august had more affordable flights since the pair had decided that they would both chip in to pay for the departure and return flights. there was a soft knock on his door and karl quickly muted his microphone, calling out to the person who had knocked.

“come in!”

his mother pushed the door open slightly, peeking her head around slightly in an attempt to keep out of karl’s way as much as she could. she held her hand out that was grasping a lavender-coloured envelope. “sweetie, you have a letter. i’m not too sure who your friend is that wrote it.”

karl sat in stunned silence for a moment, since there was only one possible person that could’ve been writing him a letter, someone that genuinely shocked him by responding. he thought that writing a letter to this sapnap character that was accented on his desk drawer was a baseless fable that would have no payoff, like writing a letter to santa clause as a young child and genuinely expecting him to respond. once he had shaken off that disbelief, he leant over the arm of his chair to grab the letter, replying with a soft “thank you” as his mother shut the door.

karl unmuted his microphone and returned his focus to the conversation in the middle of alex screaming “hi mrs jacobs!”

karl let out a wheezy laugh, shaking his head. “she couldn’t hear you, dude.”

“it was worth a shot,” alex sighed wistfully in an overdramatised voice, before returning to his normal voice. “what was she coming in for anyway?”

karl grinned. “she was giving me a reply letter from that sapnap person.”

“deadass?” alex exclaimed stunned, karl humming a confirmation. “well then hurry up and open it, i’m just as intrigued by this as you are!”

karl shook his head but still tore the envelope open and slipped the letter out. “okay, it’s on some lined paper and it’s written in blue pen, is that what you wanted, officer?”

“karl, i swear to god if you do not read it to me, i’m flying up to texas this instant and kicking you in the knees.”

karl felt conflicted. he didn’t know exactly how detailed this letter would be, and he wasn’t sure if sapnap wanted him to instantly air out his dirty laundry when they were still essentially strangers to one another. on the other hand, he was sure that no severe damage would come out of his actions, it was alex whom he was reading it to for crying out loud, he knew when to keep his mouth shut and keep the jokes to a minimal.

he deserved to have a single peek before the curtain around sapnap and karl’s conversations would be shut on him forever.

“yeah, because that’s all you could even reach.” karl had snickered back, ignoring the cackled yell of defence from alex to begin reading the letter.

_dear karl,_

_i’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that someone had actually found that. for the most part, i had forgotten that that had even happened. i wrote that when i was around twelve i’m pretty sure, time is kinda difficult for me to comprehend and decipher lately. it was really lovely of you to reach out, i honestly thought people would just ignore it and move on with their lives since it would just be insignificant in the grand scheme of things._

_i’d be happy to tell you a bit about myself as well to help bridge the gap between us and also to follow in your example in the letter you sent to me (i’m sure rosco is a sweetheart at his core). sapnap is obviously a nickname, clearly, since i don’t think any typical-functioning adult would name a child something as outlandish, but my real name is nick. i just turned eighteen, last week actually. i hate birthdays, it’s like people are forced to be nice to me for one single day at their complete inconvenience and then thins return to this state of equilibrium where i don’t even feel at ease in my day-to-day. i remember you mentioning in your letter that you played minecraft, i do too. if you have discord, you can always add me and we can play together sometime, my username on there is sapnap._

_i’m about to graduate high school and then ideally go off to college, which is terrifying. all the comfort i’ve grown accustomed to is getting tugged out of my hands slowly but surely, and the fear of the unknown ahead is chewing me up entirely. my parents have this mentality that if i don’t go off to college and set a good example for my sisters, then my entire existence will amount to nothing, so i play football and i study and i have good friends and i live in my big house and play this acting role of this vessel of teenage superiority and ideals. it feels so weird when you feel so at home and so empty simultaneously._

_maybe that’s what drove me to write my address in the desk. i just felt overwhelmed at the fact that i existed and my heart was beating, the knowledge that my life was mine but it was so alienated from my own head and i would just puppet about in hopes i could become this perfect picture of what everyone else wanted. i cannot believe i was twelve when i did it, and yet eight years later, i still feel that numbing emptiness and dissatisfaction that seems to drill its way into my brain. however, the one thing that changed was that disliking of myself and my own isolation from the world around me morphed into this lethargy that drapes over me and weakens me into my coffin as each nail goes in one by one. i’m not dead yet though, so i should be able to move, to break out and break free, but i can’t bring myself to escape. instead, i just lay and listen to the hammering of each nail as my eyes slip shut and i accept a slow and terrifying death alone and in the dark._

_sorry about that, that went a bit too dark than it should’ve. if you no longer want to associate with me, i understand, i can be a bit much, but i would really like to send more letters to you. i feel like i just took so much weight of my chest and so much air can come back into my lungs, it all feels so fresh and new now. maybe it’s the act of writing out everything i feel, putting it into words my locked tongue refuses to let me say aloud, it’s so therapeutic. i remember you mentioning that you like springtime, and how all the flowers bloom around then? maybe, you could tell me about that. i think it would be really comforting to read._

_thanks for reading,_  
_sapnap._

karl sat there as that second-last paragraph dwindled in his mind. sapnap was so, poetic. he had a way with words, expressing such a sombre thought and ideology in such creative and intricate language. it was oddly beautiful, in a weird way. his mind was both tormented and bursting with incredible vision and perception, like a winding cave submerged in darkness that eventually lead to a stunning river with glittering, crystal clear water, just yearning for one to wander through the path that reeked of fear and anxiety to find the beauty hidden within.

alex whistled lowly. “he’s got issues.”

“alex!” karl shook his head. “there is more to him than just that! he doesn’t have a viable source to put his thoughts and emotions into since he’s so focused on how other people see him, that it’s all just been festering and building up over time. he just sounds, lonely.”

alex hummed in agreement. “he said that, didn’t he? he’s simultaneously lonely yet surrounded, feels out of touch with everyone around him?”

“yeah, i guess that comes with being so determined to create this idea of the perfect person that you eventually lose yourself in it and find yourself unable to try and find it, so you just push on.”

“he should do poetry; this sad shit is making me miserable.” alex sighed.

karl had already started looking around his room for a blank piece of paper to write his response to sapnap. “not all poetry is sad you know.”

“yeah yeah, i’m guessing i’ll fly out in august then, give you a chance to bond with your little desk buddy before he goes away for college?” alex laughed.

karl remembered that sapnap was only two hours away from him, and he could drive to him and meet him if he truly wanted, and laughed, setting a new goal for himself. “yep, it looks like i’ll see you in august, how does the middle week sound to you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeehaw i wrote this part in literally two days we on: the grind

**Author's Note:**

> big ups men who play a block game for making me write fanfic again damn!!! my writing has def declined in the past two years since I last wrote and I've never used ao3 so this is a recipe for disaster BUT umm this is gonna b sad so prepare for that???
> 
> fic inspo from richard cory by tiny little houses, fic title from medicate me by tiny little houses


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